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After John E. Toffolon Jr., GABELLI ’73, ’77, died on April 26 following a battle with cancer, his family asked for memorial donations to be sent to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and to Fordham—specifically, to its New Era Fund supporting the men’s and women’s basketball programs in their drive for national prominence.

About $400,000 in memorial donations has come in to date, a sign of the strong interest prompted by Toffolon’s leadership in advancing the basketball programs, said Fordham’s athletic director, Ed Kull.

“This strong community of donors is a testament to John’s passion for the University,” said Kull, adding that Toffolon’s memory will be honored at a home basketball game this season. “I want to thank all of those who have given to Fordham basketball in memory of John Toffolon. Thanks to our community’s strong support for the New Era Fund, his passion for the program will continue on.”

That passion took root in his student days, when Fordham basketball became a national powerhouse that sold out Madison Square Garden and fueled fierce pride in the University. In 2020, as a trustee fellow, Toffolon co-founded the New Era Fund as part of the University’s current $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, which seeks to enhance the entire Fordham experience. He brought many other supporters along through his example.

In fact, he had been setting an example of giving back and helping others for most of his life—and not just in the arena of basketball.

Forged at Fordham

During his student years, Toffolon was active in many areas of University life, including United Student Government, and seemed to be able to move in every circle of students, as described by two of his classmates, David and Don Almeida, twin brothers and 1973 graduates of the Gabelli School of Business. “He was very much a Fordham guy,” said Don Almeida, a Fordham trustee fellow, “and when he graduated, he remained that for the rest of his life.”

After graduating, Toffolon launched his investment banking career in the management training program of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and came back to Fordham a few years later to earn an M.B.A. That’s when he met his wife, Joan C. Toffolon, GABELLI ’77, a fellow student in the program. He went on to hold leadership roles at First Boston Corporation, Nomura Securities international, and the Cowen Group, among other firms.

He was board chairman at Cowen during its 2009 merger with Ramius LLC, and showed genuine concern for everyone in the merged company, said Jeffrey Solomon, who was a managing member and founder of Ramius.

“John was always well intended, thoughtful, and wanted to make sure that he was making a positive impact in the lives of others,” said Solomon, now chairman and CEO of Cowen, a New York-based banking and financial services firm. Toffolon “wanted to make sure that, through his board stewardship, we were doing the best things we could for everybody at Cowen,” he said.

Giving from the Heart

That care and concern extended to his philanthropy. “John was the real deal,” said David Almeida, a board member with the Making Headway Foundation, which serves families of children diagnosed with brain or spinal cord tumors. Toffolon was a longtime supporter, and “would actually call me up every year to make sure I got the check,” a level of personal attention that meant a lot to him, Almeida said.

Toffolon gave to many organizations supporting health, education, and youth development, and played a leadership role in Fordham’s fundraising efforts. He often gave in partnership with his wife, Joan; in 1995, they created the Joan and John E. Toffolon Jr. Presidential Endowed Scholarship Fund for women attending the Gabelli School of Business.

The first recipient of the scholarship, Cindy Vojtech, Ph.D., a 2000 graduate of the Gabelli School, periodically met Toffolon for lunch. “In any conversation, it was just very clear that he was very enthusiastic about this school and about giving back and trying to … help shift the industry” toward having more women represented in its ranks, said Vojtech, a principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board and a member of the Fordham University President’s Council.

The Toffolon scholarship made it possible for her to come to Fordham and pursue her career dreams in finance and economics, she said. Today, she is paying it forward by creating a scholarship of her own, so that future students can enjoy the Fordham community and support that she did. “It’s just such an amazing gift,” she said.

Another recipient, Samantha Barrett, GABELLI ’21, met John Toffolon on a few occasions, joining him for a Fordham basketball game and dinner at Roberto’s on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx in 2018. “He was just a truly wonderful man, with the kindest heart, and I am a better person for having known him,” she said.

It was humbling and amazing, she said, to learn that the Toffolons’ scholarship would be covering the full cost of her Fordham education. “In that moment, I knew that I needed to have a college career where I did my best—for myself, for John and Joan, for my family, for those around me,” said Barrett, now an analyst at Jefferies Credit Partners in New York City. “I kept John and Joan in mind in every decision I made at Fordham,” wanting to make them proud, she said.

Before the launch of the New Era Fund, the Toffolons made many gifts to support athletics. At the Lombardi Center on the Rose Hill campus, they funded the installation of a wood floor on a practice court—now named in their honor—that is sometimes used by the basketball teams.

That gift seemed to come out of the blue, said Frank McLaughlin, FCRH ’69, athletic director emeritus at Fordham and special advisor to the director of intercollegiate athletics and recreational sports.

“He would do a lot of things unannounced like that, to help people,” McLaughlin said.

Days of Glory

McLaughlin knew Toffolon for about six decades, since Toffolon was a student and he, McLaughlin, was a young assistant basketball coach at Fordham for one season under head coach Richard “Digger” Phelps.

“In 1970–1971, it was a magical year where we were a national power, and he saw what that meant to everybody,” McLaughlin said. “There was a tremendous pride in the institution.”

The Rams went 26-3 that year, playing twice before sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden—beating Notre Dame the first time and falling to Marquette a week later. Fordham advanced to the “Sweet 16” in the NCAA tournament and finished the year ranked ninth in the country.

“Everybody was coming to see us, and Madison Square Garden was full,” Don Almeida said. “I was scared the place was going to fall down, it was shaking so much [with]everybody standing and rocking.”

The school spirit had a unifying effect, he said. “You had ROTC marching in Edwards Parade and you had anti-Vietnam War demonstrations going on all over campus, and at night, everybody was at the basketball game,” he said.

“For the four years that [John and I were] at Fordham, we had very, very respectable basketball teams,” which set a benchmark for the team’s future efforts, Almeida said. “No matter what happened thereafter, we knew what we could do, because we had done it.”

Launching a New Era

Almeida and Toffolon were part of a group led by Fordham trustee Darlene Jordan, FCRH ’89, that started the New Era Fund to boost the basketball teams as a unifying source of Fordham pride and enhance the University’s national profile.

The fund pays for the recruitment of coaching talent and various supports to help student-athletes do their best in class and on the court. With its help, the men’s team improved to a 16-16 record last season under then-head coach Kyle Neptune, and it’s seeking further progress this year under Keith Urgo, who became head coach in April.

Toffolon “was very passionate about seeing the New Era Fund get off the ground” and cared deeply about helping the student-athletes, said Frank Aiello, GABELLI ’76, a supporter of the fund and member of Fordham’s Athletics Hall of Fame committee.

He kept coming to Fordham basketball games while undergoing cancer treatments. “He was all in,” Don Almeida said. Toffolon knew and interacted with all the players, and the entire men’s and women’s teams came to his wake, along with members of the coaching staff. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the place,” he said.

Following a Mass of Christian Burial on May 5 at St. Joseph’s Church in Bronxville, New York, John Toffolon was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery. Survivors include his wife, Joan, their daughters, Ashley and Allison, and his sister, Penley Kidd (Douglas).

“There isn’t a day goes by when I am not saddened that he is no longer here to support us. But he’s there in spirit, I’ll tell you that much,” McLaughlin said. “He was an inspiration.”

To ask about contributing to the New Era Fund, contact Kara Field, director of athletic development and assistant athletic director, at 973-223-2157 or [email protected].

Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student and make a gift.

They’re backed by new energy among fans, a network of enthusiastic student supporters—and a new pool of alumni gifts that athletics director Ed Kull likens to startup funding.

Indeed, the name of the fund—the New Era Fund—reflects the hope that men’s basketball can begin anew after past struggles and that the women’s team can continue its past success.

“Our overall goal right now is to build something from the ground up, something that people are proud of, and want to invest in, because they think it’s special,” Neptune said.

The new fundraising effort is fueled by a belief in the potential of men’s and women’s basketball to advance the University generally—and a hunger for a new winning culture in the men’s program, which has had just two winning seasons since joining the Atlantic 10 in 1995.

For Every Fordham Student-Athlete

As part of its current fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, the University is seeking new investments in all sports programs, including men’s and women’s basketball, to enhance the student experience in multiple ways: by supporting student-athletes’ overall development; by stirring new Fordham pride on campus; and by bringing new renown to the University.

Other universities “have really used athletics and maximized them … to elevate the profile of the university,” said Darlene Luccio Jordan, FCRH ’89, a Fordham trustee, co-chair of the campaign, and leader in athletics fundraising. “Strong athletics goes hand in hand with [the]student experience, so it fits perfectly into this campaign and the large themes of the campaign.”

She also noted the potential for athletics to draw interest from donors who start by supporting athletics but go on to invest in other areas, including endowed professorships and financial aid.

Don Almeida, GABELLI ’73, another University trustee and a Cura Personalis campaign cabinet member, said a strong basketball program can draw in lots of new non-alumni donors who are excited about athletics. It can also signal excellence at the University more generally, and showcase Fordham not only nationally but also globally, in part by leveraging the University’s New York location, he said.

“It’s not [just]about basketball. Basketball is the enabler,” he said. “It’s the method by which Fordham can leverage all its good attributes with a national and international profile and with donors, alumni, students, parents, and others.”

“If you have a national profile, you’re on national TV, you’re in the national press, and everybody gets to know real quickly what Fordham is,” he said.

And new investment in the team is essential, Neptune said. “We’re going against a really, really good league,” in which multiple schools are spending two to four times as much on their teams, he said.

The New Era Fund has drawn more than $3 million in giving to date. It offers support for the men’s and women’s programs in hiring and retaining a talented coaching staff, Kull said, in addition to other things such as marketing, production equipment for recording games, and software to help players analyze the performance of teams they’re about to play against.

It could also fund facilities renovations or charter flights that minimize the disruption of student-athletes’ academic schedules by providing faster, more convenient travel to and from games, he said.

The Herd

Meanwhile, Fordham athletics is also working with a student group dubbed the Herd (formerly Fordham Fanatics) to build new enthusiasm for basketball and all other sports teams at the University.

The basketball season began with a Nov. 4 “Late Night on the Hill” celebration at the historic Rose Hill Gym; rap star A$AP Ferg performed for a crowd of 2,700 students, with student-athletes in attendance. And the Herd’s five student organizers are corralling students via social media and other means to fill the stands for all Fordham sports—from basketball and football to water polo, swimming and diving, softball, and everything in between—and restore the athletics energy that was muted last year because of pandemic lockdowns.

“Already this year there’s been a huge culture change in the fan base,” said one member of the Herd, Dillane Wehbe, a swim team member and a senior at the Gabelli School of Business. “That’s what we’re really going for, just to make the whole experience better—for students to … have fun at the games, for athletes to really feel like they’re being supported by their school.

“It’s a whole new crowd at the games, a whole new energy,” he said.

Another Herd member, women’s basketball team member Kaitlyn Downey, also a senior at Gabelli, is happy to be playing in front of others again after a year of games in “quiet, quiet gym,” with only a recording of applause. “You never really appreciated it, having fans in the stands, until you realize what it’s like when there’s none there,” she said.

Both the women’s and men’s basketball teams are off to encouraging starts, with the men having won seven of their first 12 games and the women surging to 8-3 on a four-game win streak. The Herd members are trying to fill the Rose Hill Gym for home games for both men’s and women’s basketball to fire up the players and fuel their success, said another member of the team, Thomas Aiello, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill.

“Just trying to get that feeling back is so imperative to … everything that we’re trying to do,” he said. “When the Rose Hill Gym is full, there’s nothing like it at all.”

To ask about contributing to the New Era Fund, contact Kara Field, director of athletic development and assistant athletic director, at 212-636-8896 or [email protected].

Learn more about Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student and make a gift.

If you have a question about giving to Fordham, call 212-636-6550 or send an email to [email protected].